


The Moon Over Pisces

by jericho



Category: Actor RPF, Call Me By Your Name (2017) RPF, Canadian Actor RPF, Director RPF
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst, Drug Use, First Time Blow Jobs, Gay Sex, M/M, References to Addiction, Shower Sex, So many accent aigus, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-10
Updated: 2019-04-12
Packaged: 2020-01-11 01:35:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18420122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jericho/pseuds/jericho
Summary: It's three years in the future. Xavier, beaten down from years of criticism and obstacles, has stopped making films. He writes a new movie and gives it to Timothée, who he's not-so-secretly loved for years. And for Timothée, suddenly, everything comes easily.





	1. Chapter 1

There was a profile - another one - of Timothée in GQ, and Xavier read it from the couch in his living room.

He got Google Alerts every day for Timothée's name, and every day, there were more of them. Some results were blogs - "I saw Timothée Chalamet and Lily getting ice cream in the East Village." Some were new stories, like "How The Moon Over Pisces could influence the Alabama midterms." This one was about Timothée Chalamet, renaissance man, with the headline "Is there anything Timothée Chalamet can't do?"

It had a new photo shoot of Timothée standing tall and lean in a Vuitton suit. Xavier had been an ambassador for Vuitton five years earlier, wearing Vuitton to parties, and in photo shoots, and on red carpets for his own films, back when he made them. Now it was Timothée in Vuitton over an article that outlined all his achievements.

Timothée had written, directed and starred in The Moon Over Pisces, the article said. A story about a Québecois kid who was a rum runner during the Roaring Twenties. It displayed an uncanny knowledge of the period. It displayed an uncanny understanding of politically riotous Québecois culture, and of being gay in an era where such a thing had to be hidden. It even quoted one of the characters saying riding a boat in the darkness is like sinking into tar.

Xavier remembered writing that line. He'd looked at it on his screen in his little bedroom that doubled as his workspace, one with overflowing ashtrays and sweatpants on the floor like chalk outlines. He'd forged ahead from there, ignoring bubbles of text messages on his phone, and the clunking sound of his upstairs neighbour climbing the stairs. Then he'd finished it, and looked at it, and closed the file.

"It's brilliant," Timothée had said then. "You have to film it. Like, have to."

"You do it if you like it so much." Xavier had already emailed him the file. Then he sent him a new copy, scanned with his handwritten notes. Casting suggestions. Wardrobe suggestions. A lookbook. Every line, every nuance, every shot was laid out like a recipe. Xavier already knew the criticisms he'd hear if he did it himself. That it was too narcissistic. Too affected. Too gay.

For a year, nothing happened. Then finally, he got a phone call from Timothée, who'd had lunch with a major studio person who offered him a development deal. He was one of the youngest they'd ever offered that. _Precocious,_ people called him. Once upon a time, they'd called Xavier that, but he was in his thirties now, and no one noticed anymore.

Xavier scrolled through the article, past the description of the movie, past the screen shot of it. He picked up his phone and saw the unanswered _How are you?_ text from five days earlier, and answered it.

 _I just saw you in GQ_ , he typed. _Nice._ Send.

He waited a few moments then, waiting for a blinking ellipses to show a reply. Timothée was with Lily, maybe. Or another fabulous Hollywood friend. Or getting yet another award, sitting at a table with Francis Ford Coppola and Oprah Winfrey, laughing at the jokes the host made on stage about how he was everywhere now, as ubiquitous as air.

An ellipses appeared, pulsing like a heartbeat, then disappeared, and no message came.

Xavier stood and took his empty glass to the kitchen. He drank whiskey and coke these days, and the ice hadn't melted, which meant there was space for more whiskey and more coke to force the dissolve. He could drink until they clinked around and became the size of Tic Tacs, and then fill it again. He never looked at the bottom of an empty glass.

How long had it been since Timothée last sat there, on a stool in the kitchen, listening to French rap and laughing so hard the whole room sparkled? It had been even longer since he'd kissed him. That had been short lived, really. It ended not long after Xavier's last movie, a French gay love story, fizzled at the premiere. Xavier had always relied on government grants, and with two bombs in a row, they dried up. The government had changed. Staffing had changed. He'd filled out the grant applications himself and got $50,000. Not even enough to rent the equipment.

He sat at the counter with his new drink and opened his scrapbook. _Xavier Dolan has always been all flash and no substance._

_Xavier Dolan's latest shows an inability to connect with other human beings in any real sense._

_Dolan's hovering closeups of his own image show a rapidly fading youthfulness that carried his previous efforts._

He flipped it closed and looked down at his phone. Finally, a text.

 _I'm in NYC for the next week_ , Timothée said. _You should come._

Xavier knew if he scrolled up, he'd find the messages from the first time they ever kissed. It was after the premiere of Xavier's first English film, The Death and Life of John F. Donovan. He never scrolled upward though. The results would make his chest tighten, like catching the ominous flash of a ghost. His mind muted the details daily, but they were still there, ready to be exposed.

**

It was September 2018, in the Winter Garden Theatre, and Xavier showed up 45 minutes late.

He walked in to a row of media, all with their cameras poised, annoyance snapping in their eyes. "I'm sorry, guys," he said. "The movie's already started."

He sprinted into the theatre, which had vines climbing the walls and spreading across the ceiling like a sort of elfin daydream. When he took his seat, he saw Timothée sitting next to Canada's minister of heritage and multiculturalism.

He wore baggy pants and a sweatshirt, and a baseball cap pulled down over his eyes. Xavier sat behind and two seats over for him, and leaned forward to touch his shoulder. Timothée brightened. "Hey!" The lights dimmed to darkness and Timothée was illuminated only by the glow of the blossoming montage on the screen.

Midway through, Xavier felt the air change. He heard legs shuffling. Throats clearing. A man two rows ahead of him, in one of the $100 seats, got up and walked away with his coat draped over his arm, and he never came back. Xavier remembered the journalist questions from earlier. _What if this doesn't do well? What's at stake?_ They'd seen the film. That's when he knew.

Timothée touched Xavier's sleeve on his way out afterward. "I loved it."

"We're going to the after party. You should come if you want."

"I'm not really dressed for it." Timothée glanced down at himself and up again, and gave a shy smile. "I've been hitting them hard this week."

It was true. Xavier's Google Alerts had turned up photos of Timothée hugging Matthew McConaughey at a party, and dancing on a table at another one. Plus there was his own for Beautiful Boy, a movie critics were pegging for Oscar buzz - again.

"I'll see you later then." Xavier touched Timothée's sleeve back, and let his arm drift to keep contact with Timothée's until the crowd pulled them apart.

He turned and bumped into his mother in her copper lace gown, who was craning her neck to see. "Isn't that Timothée Chalamet?"

"It is." Xavier glanced back. "He has somewhere to be."

His mother gave him someone to hang onto as they took a brisk walk through the audience, where faces avoided eye contact. His father was busy, and not even the promise of movie stars made him to cancel his plans.

Xavier stayed next to her as people trickled into the Windsor House, shaking his hand, not mentioning the film at all. By the time he left, the first review was online. One star out of four.

_After his last film, the screechy, annoying It’s Only the End of the World, he’s descended even further into self-parody with Donovan, a film so befuddling to watch and understand that one can sense the tortured post-production process lingering over every scene._

Xavier slipped into the hotel bar, lit in the dark, and slid up on a stool, tapping the bar to get the bartender's attention. "You still open?"

"Sure."

"My movie just bombed. My $35 million fucking movie. People hated it. Or critics. Critics hated it."

"My cousin's a movie critic. Probably not a very good one. What'll you have?"

He asked for a whiskey, and when it arrived, it made a wet ring on the bar. Xavier took a long drink. It was like breathing again. He looked at the image of himself in the mirror behind the rows of alcohol, his face pulled askew by one of the square panels of glass. His eyes had dark circles under them, dark like when It's Only the End of the World had premiered and critics said that as a gay man, he should have taken the AIDS crisis seriously. Review after review bore fangs, ripping into the soft flesh of a smaller animal, chewing off limbs until only a partial carcass was left. The goal was to eat him, regurgitate, repeat.

He thought about all this when he heard a soft voice beside him. It was Timothée, perched on the stool next to him with silent stealth.

"I didn't even see you come in," Xavier said in French.

Timothée shrugged. "I snuck up on you. I would have texted but I didn't know your number."

Xavier lifted his arm at the bartender, making a circular motion with his finger to signal another round.

"I'll just take a water," Timothée said.

Xavier raised an eyebrow. "Really? That's it?"

"I told you, I'm detoxing."

The bartender brought over the drinks, and Xavier faced Timothée. Their stools were close enough together that their knees touched. Timothée's legs spread out, long and thin, like ribbons tied in a bow. "I liked your movie," Timothée said. "It's important. I've never seen a movie about that before, that addressed something like that. No one else has the balls."

"Mmm" was all Xavier said.

"Hollywood hates when it sees itself held up like that. Reflected. But it has to be reflected. Everyone says being gay is no big deal in Hollywood anymore but...it is. Everyone still has to pretend."

Xavier sucked back part of his drink and licked his lips. It prevented him from chewing his nails. He'd chewed them down so far lately that he needed a Band Aid on one of them. Every once in a while, the skin around his fingernails grew back, plump and pink, and he gnawed them down again. "Where are you staying?"

"I thought maybe here tonight."

Xavier's head snapped up, his eyebrows raised. "Here?"

"Yeah. With you." Timothée said it to the floor, keeping his eyes down, and he gave one of those awkward little laughs like nothing was really funny.

Xavier swallowed. He set the glass on the bar, not as interested in it anymore. Timothée's leg relaxed and his knee tapped against Xavier's.

Timothée's brow furrowed. "Is that OK? I mean if it's weird...."

"No, I mean...yeah. Yeah. Stay here, with me." With more sobriety, he would have pondered it more, but his heart quickened to a gallop now. Music played overhead. That cloud nine song by Katy Perry, with a title he would known earlier in the day. "I was going up soon."

"I'm good whenever you are."

Xavier stood, placing his feet on the ledge that ran along the bottom of the bar, and asked for the bill. He paid for it using his credit card - there was _just_ enough room on it - and stepped back. "Allons-y."

The pair of them shuffled to the elevator, through the too-bright lobby with large fake plants like green eagle wings. They rode the elevator in silence, the air padded somehow. In the mirror, Xavier saw his Louis Vuitton suit with the small checks.

He'd only used his key card twice, but it worked this time. Inside, his suitcase was open on the chair like it had exploded. The curtains were drawn. Everything was lit by a dim lamp.

"So do you want to smoke? I have some...." Xavier turned, wondering if he should put on the TV, or fetch some tiny bottles of booze from the mini fridge. He felt the need to entertain.

When he turned, he saw Timothée strip off his shirt and set it on the bed. His arms were long and white, his stomach sunken, his torso straight up and down like a fluorescent office light bulb. Timothée glanced at Xavier, then undid his loose pants, letting them fall into a figure-eight of material with no further effort. His boxers were gone too. His penis was flaccid, slim and pale, nestled against a bed of dark hair.

It wasn't until he climbed into bed, yanking the tight hotel sheets loose, that Xavier realized he was gaping. Timothée rolled onto his side, bending his legs so his knees poked forward. "Are you staying up?"  
If it wasn't for the booze, Xavier's hands would have shaken. They'd never done that with anyone else. Never before. He hung the jacket on a hanger, then the shirt, then the pants.

He strolled to the bed and climbed in, lying so his position mirrored Timothée's. Under the blanket, his hand crept toward Timothée, and he saw the lump of it under the blankets. Timothée extended his and their fingers touched, and then he turned his hand upward so Xavier could drift his fingers over the inside of his wrist.

Timothée slid his hand forward and drifted it down Xavier's chest, down to his cock, which stiffened and grew from the attention. "It's big," Timothée whispered.

"Thank you." Xavier narrowed his eyes to make out his partner in the near darkness. "Have you ever touched one that wasn't yours?"

"No."

Without another word, Timothée shifted toward him, kicking the tight sheets looser and slipping down the bed. When Xavier rolled onto his back, it was automatic, a position born from years of what he thought was coming.

And then it did come. Timothée down to his hips, his skinny shoulders hunched, hovering his mouth over Xavier's cock like he'd gotten this far and forgotten the mission. Xavier grabbed his erection at the base, standing it up toward him, afraid to speak for fear he'd startle him into changing his mind.

Then Timothée parted his virgin mouth and licked at him. Timid at first, and then inch by careful inch. Xavier breathed in from the scrape of teeth. His hand hovered over the mass of loose curls, wanting to land and grab them, but letting it stay there in the air.

"You don't have to go too deep," he whispered. "You can't do it wrong."

Timothée drew back, and then down again, the shaft sliding in his mouth, between his eager teeth. A little whimper escaped from Xavier's mouth, and he let his shoulders rest on the bed. He didn't have to look anymore. It was enough to feel.

He felt it, with its awkward tooth scrapes and uneven head bobbing, until he whispered an urgent warning, and he came. It would have been better if he wasn't drunk - faster, sharper, reminiscent of technicolours. It was more relaxed now, rippling through him and taking its breath in its wake. And the agitation. That was gone too.

Timothée wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and crawled upward. Xavier rolled onto his side, prepared to head downward, and Timothée put his hand on his shoulder. "In the morning. I'm sleepy."

Xavier bridged the gap between them and planted a kiss on his lips, holding him there as he found Timothée's cock and stroked it. He'd jerked off a few dozen people in his time, dating back to adolescence. This was easy. He listened to Timothée's quick breaths, and the little kitten-whimper when he came, and Xavier's heart bloomed like a flower. He reached back to the Kleenex box on the bedside table and grabbed a tissue to wipe his hand. He tossed it in the direction of the waste basket and it fell short, dying on the carpet as a moist, spent aberration.

They laid there together again, facing each other, and Timothée found him in the darkness. Their lips lingered together, opening and closing, tongue swipes between little kisses, and Xavier felt his own long exhale. They rested, each with his own pillow, but their foreheads touched in the middle.

"In the morning," Timothée mumbled. "We can do more in the morning."

"We will. We fucking will."


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Timothée wants to meet.

Looking back, Xavier figured he'd always been Timothée's bitch. He'd commented to his Instagram posts for years now. "Hum," he said to some of them. Like, like, like. Heart, heart, heart.

They'd first met in Paris when Xavier had interviewed him. He'd flown there largely for that, but he didn't tell anyone that. Frank Ocean had interviewed him too. Tyler the Creator mentioned him in a song. Everyone wanted to fuck Timothée.

Xavier recalled sitting across from him, both of them in comfy chairs as a recorder whirred on a table in the middle. He checked it once, twice, again and again, as Timothée's knees wiggled back and forth. There was a laziness to the way Timothée watched him, something vaguely childlike. His hair was floppy but also perfectly arranged, like someone had styled it to look like he didn't care.

After Timothée watched him check the recorder for the third time, then glance at the publicists by the door, he sank back in the chair.

"I like your movies," Timothée began. "I Killed My Mother...."

"That was shot on digital. I can hardly look at it now. It seems like shit but...I don't want to take away from anyone who likes it, you know? You're in the industry though. I can tell you I wish I hadn't shot it on digital."

Timothée sat forward, fidgeting with his hands, then gestured with one, and it was light and pale as a piece of tissue paper. "I've seen all of them," he offered. "All of them that are out so far."

"I've seen all of yours too. I think so, anyway. They all need more you."

Timothée nodded down at the recorder. "Are we doing the interview yet?"

"No. I have official questions." Xavier fished a folded piece of paper out of his pocket and spread it on his lap. When he'd first drafted them, they were all about Timothée and Armie. He'd scratched some out in the back of the cab on the way over here as the driver sat in a clog of traffic. The paper had crinkled on his knee, and at one point, he wrote so hard that the pen poked through.

And so they did it. In English. Timothée spoke French, but not well enough to be as comfortable with it in an interview, and Xavier was finally realizing that he was fluently bilingual. It had taken a long time to reach that realization, probably years after it was actually true. He'd been listening to a Lil Wayne song and realized he understood all the words, without reading them, and that he hadn't had to read them in a while. He'd started English classes when he was eight and stammered through them for years, watching Charmed and keeping a notebook of words he didn't know. And now, there he was, a renowned filmmaker in his twenties, and fluent.

He thought about this now as he rode the subway down to the studio. He still did voice over work. He still had a condo mortgage to pay. He lived in the same two bedroom he'd lived in for years. He'd never traded up since he'd never really had any money. The budgets of his movies always exceeded the box office, even on Donovan. _Especially_ on Donovan. In every case, he took a basic director's fee and put the rest toward the next movie.

He pressed his forehead against the subway window and felt the slow throb of his head. When he reached in his pocket, he felt the little plastic container with pills rattling in it. The container was from a vintage store. At one point, it held mints. Xavier examined the girl in the little hula dress on the front, tilting it so the muted interior lights of the subway car glinted off her. Then he opened it and fished out a white pill bisected by a line, with an M stamped on it, and popped it in his mouth.

He got off at Bonaventure and headed onto the street, where a guy was crouched in the doorway of a Couche-Tard. He'd be kicked out soon, Xavier knew. Businesses did that. They didn't want customers to have to step over panhandlers. Xavier fished in his pockets but only had a dime, and he wasn't going to give the guy that. It seemed insulting in the way a small tip would be.

He got to the studio door just as his phone rang, and the word "Mom" lit up the screen.

"Timothée is coming here," she said when he answered. "His movie is nominated for some Canadian Screen Awards."

"Here? To Montréal?"

"Yes!" It was the same excited voice she'd used when she'd gone with him to Cannes, and he'd won the Jury Prize for Mommy. He'd gotten a 10-minute standing ovation, so long that he ran out of people to hug and resorted to blowing kisses at the TV camera. She'd had tears in her eyes, putting her hands on his cheeks and kissing his forehead with more tenderness than he could ever remember.

"Do you think he'd come over for dinner?" she said through the phone.

"I don't know. He'll be pretty busy."

"Not too busy for you, right?"

"I don't know, Mom." Xavier stopped in the lobby and waved at the guy behind the counter. "I doubt he'll come for that. He has a million awards shows to go to. This is number 50 on the list." It never had been for Xavier. He'd shown up every time he'd been nominated, and he'd been nominated a lot. "I have to go. I have to do a thing."

They hung up, and Xavier walked into the studio. He wore his usual studio attire - Adidas pants, sweatshirt with a hole in the stomach, ball cap. A few minutes later, he was sitting in a chair in front of a mic, reading Timothée's parts in The Moon Over Pisces, but in French.

Most of the time, he didn't have to look at the words. The main character was Claude, age 25. He was raised by his mom after his dad died in a factory fire. They struggled by with little money, which was shown in flashbacks. His mother eating the heels of the bread loaf. Her saying she wasn't hungry while little Claude ate. The film showed Claude on the streets of Pisces - Xavier's stand-in for Plage-Desranleau, where he'd gone with a boyfriend when he was 18. Claude walked into a bar, met Alistair, and next thing, they're packing boats full of booze to paddle across the water into Vermont.

He needed no direction to do the voice over. He did it in one long, seamless stretch until six hours passed, and they reached the credits, and Claude faded away. For a while, he'd been a vibrant thing, so tangible Xavier could hold him in his hands. Xavier sat in the chair, letting the mic scrape his forehead. He tapped his teeth together, feeling how the molars fit together at the back. He chewed the skin around his nail.

Timothée had said once in the media that Xavier was involved. It was an MTV junket interview. "What made you want to set it in Québec?" the interviewer asked.

"I was talking about the plot with my friend Xavier Dolan. We knew it had to be along the border, obviously. And he suggested Québec. He said to call it Pisces because it's his astrological sign. I was gonna change it but it just stuck."

Then they moved on. Xavier couldn't blame them. He hadn't asked for a credit. The end credits said "Co-written by Timothée Chalamet," with no second name, and at first, a couple of articles used the word "co-written." The media liked to create a narrative though, and it was a better narrative to believe Timothée created it all. And Xavier, sitting up in Montréal with his blinds drawn, hadn't asked for anything different.

Xavier hung up the headphones and headed outside, stopping at the panhandler. "Sorry, brother," he said. "I used to have money. I was a big deal. And it's all gone."

It showed in the guy's eyes. He didn't care. None of them cared, really, outside of their own immediate needs. This guy needed money. Timothée needed a movie. Xavier wasn't sure what he needed himself, but it was growing in him like cancer.

He dropped the dime in the guy's cup and shuffled to the subway stop, head down, smoking a cigarette. At one point on the subway, he noticed a guy's eyes drift over him and do a double take. Xavier glanced at him and kept his earbuds in. These moments happened all the time. The vague recognition.

His phone didn't work underground, but when he got to the surface, he saw the text.

_I'm coming there next week. Meet up with me._

Xavier lit another cigarette for the walk, and stared at his phone as he inched closer to his condo.

 _Ok,_ he finally texted back. Timothée responded, but Xavier had already dropped his phone in his pocket. He forced himself to space out the contact. He couldn't get too used to it. Couldn't let himself like it too much. If he lived for it from text to text, he'd die.

Walking home, he thought about that next morning at the hotel, way back when.

He'd followed through. He'd entered the shower with Timothée and ran his soapy hands over him from behind, feeling Timothée melt back against him and close his eyes. Then Xavier had dropped to his knees, the hard porcelain biting into them, and told Timothée to put his foot on the side of the tub.

He had, and it spread his legs, and Xavier licked the tight, tiny bud of his ass. He reached between those slender limbs and grabbed what he found, stroking it. How magnificent, this flesh in all its technicolor detail. Xavier had hooked up with a lot of guys. He'd stroked a lot of dicks. None, though, pierced his heart like this one, and the echo of Timothée's sighs against the bathtub tiles.

When they got out, Xavier grabbed a fluffy white towel and dried him off. Tended to him. Kissed him. Then Timothée had to go, back to Boston to film some more. Xavier had to return to finish his own film.

They were different people then.


End file.
